Imprint, Friday, September 23,1994

The Fall: Up to their same old Brix
Brix Smith - The Imprint interview
by Sandy Atwal

From 1983 to 1989, the Fall underwent what turned out to be a major line-up change with the addition of Mark E. Smith’s wife, Brix. With the inclusion of Brix, the FalI entered one of their most prolific and creative eras. Their subsequent albums, The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall, This Nation’s Saving Grace, The Frenz Eperiment and I am Kurious Oranj revealed a hitherto untapped dimension of Mark E. Smith and the Fall. Their sound wasn’t quite Bryan Ferry smooth, but they had toned down their dissonance and broadened their musical horizons.

However, all good things, as they say, must come to an end. The failure of Btix and Smith’s marriage also marked the end of Brix’ stint with the band with 1989’s Seminal Live.

Their next album, Extricate, was surprisingly strong, but Smith’s Brix is still for venomous lyrics on “Sing! Harpy” and other tracks demonstrated that the split was not amicable. Subsequent interviews with Smith confirmed that fact.

That Brix was rumoured to have returned for the band’s latest tour sounded too ridiculous to be true. Her ex-communication was final - or so everyone thought. When Britain’s New Musical Express revealed that the rumours were true, fans were floored.

Indeed, Brix is back, apparently for good. Imprint had a chance to talk to Brix about what she’s been up to for the last few years.

So the question on everyone’s mind is how exactly did you get back together with the Fall?

Well, it was a very psychic coincidental thing. I had been working with other people for a while, and it had been five years since I played with the Fall and I really started to miss the artistic freedom that I had, and the power of the band. The Fall is one of the most powerful bands around and it’s just the intensity of it, and the fact that I could truly be me and not have to play somebody else’s music.

Didn't you find that freedom with the Adult Net?

Totally, but I wasn’t doing the Adult Net anymore. I was playing with other people. So I just missed it, and Mark and I hadn’t really spoken very much over the five years. I mean the last two years I’ve spent living in America and we never really talked, but then out of the blue, we called each other.

Did he call you or did you call him?

I called him once and he called me once. I don’t remember who called who first, but I remember that I missed writing with him. He’s brilliant to work with; for me he was my ultimate partner in terms of writing. So I said ‘If you want to write, or you want me to play on anything, let me know’ and he was like ‘Alright.’

Then he called me back, like, four hours later and he was like, ‘You know what, I can’t believe you said that to me because I’ve been thinking about getting you back in the band for so long and I really miss having your guitar playing, we really could use it right now.’ So it was like a weird thing. At the same time I was thinking it, he was thinking it, and I don’t think he thought that I would come back and I knew he thought I wouldn’t come back, because I quit. And I said I’d come back and that was that.

So I guess you could chalk it up to fate.

Yeah, you have to trust those things, you have to trust coincidences like that. He didn’t want me back as a wife, he wanted me back as a musician, which was really good for me, obviously.

So what’s it been like? Is it a complete culture shock or was it like you never left?

Yeah, well you’ll see. I mean it is different. They’ve sort of grown and progressed in their own way without me, and written a lot of songs without me. I mean we’re maybe doing a couple of old songs that I wrote, but mostly what they wrote, and I’m adding my stamp to it. I’m not playing parts that were written by them, I’m playing parts that I wrote over their stuff. I played with them for so long, that it is almost like I never left; you know like when you know somebody that well.

I didn’t even have any rehearsals to tell you the truth. Sometimes I don’t know a song. I’ve never heard it maybe, and I write down the key it’s in on my set list, and it’s really weird because my set lists have been like the most coveted item. People are scrambling on stage trying to snatch it off my amp, but they have my notes on it, so I can’t let it go. If there’s a song later on that I don’t know, I’m going like WHAT KEY IS IT IN?? I actually, in New York, snatched it out of somebody’s hand in the audience.

That’s the dedication of Fall fans at work.

I know. I can only think of it in a good way. I keep going, ‘You can have it at the end, you can have it at the end. ’

Were you following the Fall after you left?

Not really...vaguely.

Did you buy any of their albums?

No, not at all. I own no album I ever recorded. I had no Fall albums, no Adult Net, nothing.

Why?

I didn’t want it I got fed up with music. The Honey Tangle was an album that did not turn out the way I wanted it to because I was bullied by the record company and I basically had to do what they told me to do.

And who was that?

Phonogram. They wanted me to be something that I really wasn’t, and I lost sight of my original goal, and basically I had to kill, I had to anesthetize, the Adult Net and cover it’s mouth with ether and put it to sleep for a good few years until I knew exactly what I was doing.

But it’s rising. When it’s not right, you’ve got to take a break from it and step back and have a good hard look at why it isn’t working and why you aren’t satisfied with your work. It’s not all the record company’s fault. The album, lyrically, although it was very interesting and wordy, it was really supeficial to me and I didn’t ever really express what I was truly feeling inside myself and it was just coming out all wrong, like it was censored, like it was filtered through cheesecloth and I didn’t know how to get back to the real essence of what was inside me, so I had to quit altogether and do something completely different and get away until I was ready to do it again.

I got to a point where I was so insecure that I was writing the thing, and having them play everything and I wasn’t like touching anything. It never had enough of me on it, that album, it sounded like someone else.

Are you getting to express yourself the way you want with the Fall?

Well the Fall is the Fall, but Adult Net is now clawing its way out of the grave. I’ve worked really hard since January, just vomiting songs out, songs that have been hibernating for five years and really I’m really completely happy with what I’m doing. I have a new partner, in Adult Net. I always had a partner who could always do what I couldn’t do, and my new partner is this guy named Marty Willson-Piper he’s in a band called the Church. He’s an excellent guitarist and songwriter. So he’s my partner, and we recorded stuff this summer. I love him, he’s my partner and he’s just cool.

So are you just joining the FalI for this tour or are you back with the band?

I think I’m going to be back in the Fall as far as I know now. You never really know what’s going to happen. Obviously my solo stuff is my ultimate priority as a human being on this earth really, but I love working with the Fall and I’m feeling really happy about it at the moment. I won’t do anything that doesn’t make me happy. The minute I get miserable again, I’ll just do something else. I found out in the five years (I was away from the band) that it is actually music that I was meant to do. Which I really had to search and make sure.

Next Week: Brix’ friendship with Hole’s Courtney Love and the ever-recalcitrant, Mark E. Smith.

Imprint, Friday, September 30,1994

Fall in a Hole
by Sandy Atwal

This week, Imprint presents part two of an interview with Brix E. Smith, retuming guitarist/bassist/vocalist for the Fall.

There were rumours circulating for a while that you’d be playing bass for Hole. Whatever came of that?

I never met Courtney until some time in July, but she knew who I was and had all my records and I knew who she was. I think Courtney’s great. I love her.

When the bass player died, it was like, they wanted me to do it. I’d be happy to do it, but I could not commit to them. They really needed someone who’s whole life was being in Hole and being a bass player and could, like, commit for two years, and I can’t do that because I’ve got other fish to fry, my own stuff. I did that with the Fall, and I need to be able to do more than one thing.

But I love them and would play with them anytime they asked me, basically.

Do you still keep in touch with Courtney?

Well, no. I mean, she’s busy and on the road, but we have each other’s numbers, and I’m sure that if we ever feel like chatting. . . I actually do miss her, I really think she’s a cool person.

Do you worry about her?

No. I think that she is handling everything with the utmost dignity under the circumstances, and I think she’s a really, really strong person. Also, I know, because she’s told me, she’s going to wake up every day. Courtney Love is not going away.

Over the last few months, a lot of rumours have been circulating about Mark E. Smith. Apparently he’s been even more cantankerous than usual. Are these rumours, of him attacking soundmen and photographers, true?

(pause) Yeah, they’re true.

Is he a hard person to get along with?

No. He’s a lovely person with a lovely heart, he’s really a gentleman. He’ll open the door for any woman, he’s not a mean person or anything like that.

But he’s a perfectionist, and he likes things just so. He’s been doing this for many, many years, and he really doesn’t have the patience for crap. There’s nothing wrong with that. He’s very strict about certain things, and that’s just the way he is. So yes it’s true, and if something isn’t right to him, he won’t do it.

He’s Mark E. Smith and he’s, like, the original. What can you say about him? He’s brilliant, he’s a genius, he’s a genius lyricist who invented his own way of playing music.

He’s just a really interesting, eccentric person, and anybody who is that bright and that sort of different than the run of the mill person is going to be difficult in certain ways or be easy in other ways.

Madness goes with genius, and I actually believe that. I’m not saying he’s mad by any stretch, but I think that he is delinitely eccentric, and I think that’s a good thing, and I think that makes him even more enigmatic and compelling.

As far as the British press is concerned, he seems pretty much beyond criticism. They fall over themselves to praise him and they’re rarely, if ever, critical of him.

Yeah that’s true. I think that he has his own standards, and that he’s very, very self-critical, so it doesn’t do anybody any good to criticize him because he’s right there before they are.

He’s brilliant at censoring his own stuff. He taught me so much about writing lyrics. I’d write these poems and he just take it and cross it out, saying “this one goes, this line goes, take out this paragraph, this goes,” and then he’d hand me the paper back and “go there you are,” and it would be brilliant. He’s such a good editor, and I learned a lot about editing from him.

All I know is the way that I worked with him in the past which is I would come up with a tune, you know - chord progression, a rhythm, maybe a title, “2 by 4” or “Terry Waite Sez” - and I’d take him a cassette, play the guitar into the cassette, and he’d either have lyrics already written, or he’d write lyrics to fit it. So we didn’t sit down and write it together. Or he’d have lyrics for me. And then we’d hand it to the band, and I’d play my part, and they’d fit in their part.

One of the things that does amaze me is how prolific he is. He’s definitely not one to rest on his laurels.

It’s cathartic for him, a way of venting. A lot of people get out whatever’s inside them in different ways, be it weight-lifting, or fucking, or just working. There are certain things that you do on this earth that help you express yourself and that’s what he does. He’s got to do that. It’s not like I’m going to make a brilliant album and sell a million records and be a pop star - he has to do that. It’s his calling on this earth. That’s why it’s always so pure and so good because it’s never done from the wrong motivation.

He also does seem a little protective of his work. His reaction to Pavement, which some people see as very heavily Fall-influenced, isn’t all that positive.

I actually like Pavement a lot to tell you the truth, although I’m probably going to have my head chopped for saying that.

What do you think of the Fall-Pavement comparisons?

Some of the songs are total rip-offs. I know that in a way it drives you crazy that that happens, but I think of it as a form of flattery and I like them for some reason. It doesn’t make me angry that they’re doing that. I’m only speaking for myself here, Brix Smith alone says this.

I understand Mark’s point of view as well. I don’t even know what else I’m listening to, I’ve had to learn so much stuff.

I’ve had to learn this, and I’ve learned maybe four albums since June.

It’s funny that since I’ve really started buying Fall albums, I’ve picked up about nine or ten of them, and yet it doesn’t seem like I’ve really got a whole handle on the band. They definitely come in stages

There are different eras.

You must be very proud to be part of one of those eras.